Debian releases and names

Debian releases are named after characters from Toy Story and are frequently referred to with the name rather than the version. This post is for my own quick reference for the version-to-name of each Debian release.

Debian version names

I've added the Toy Story character name into each row as well, because sometimes they're not completely obvious. For example, even though I've seen all the movies, it took looking up the name behind "Squeeze" to know it was the alien toys who first appeared in Toy Story 2.

Version

Code name

Release date

Toy Story character

1.1

Buzz

1996-06-17

Buzz Lightyear

1.2

Rex

1996-12-12

Rex (the T-Rex)

1.3

Bo

1997-06-05

Bo Peep

2.0

Hamm

1998-07-24

Hamm (the pig)

2.1

Slink

1999-03-09

Slinky Dog

2.2

Potato

2000-08-15

Mr Potato Head

3.0

Woody

2002-07-19

Woody the cowboy

3.1

Sarge

2005-06-06

Sarge from the Bucket O' Soldiers

4.0

Etch

2007-04-08

Etch, the Etch-A-Sketch

5.0

Lenny

2009-02-14

Lenny, the binoculars

6.0

Squeeze

2011-02-06

Squeeze toy aliens

7

Wheezy

2013-05-04

Wheezy the penguin

8

Jessie

2015-04-26

Jessie the cowgirl

9

Stretch

2017-06-17

Rubber octopus from Toy Story 3

10

Buster

not yet released

Andy's pet dog

11

Bullseye

Not yet released

Woody's horse

Sid

"unstable"

The next door neighbour

Debian always has at least three releases in active maintenance: stable (currently Stretch), testing (currently Buster) and unstable, which is permanently named Sid after the boy next door in Toy Story 1 who liked to destroy toys.
Bulk of the development work is uploaded to the "Sid" distribution. This distribution will never get released. instead, packages from it will propagate into testing and then into a real release.